When Florida legislators gather in Tallahassee in January for their 2018 session, their primary responsibility — assembling and passing a balanced budget — could be more challenging than usual. Their chief economist has warned them that a small surplus predicted for next year almost certainly disappeared after Hurricane Irma tore its destructive path up the Florida Peninsula in September, and deficits of at least $1 billion are looming in the following years. In the face of that gloomy forecast, responsible legislators will be on the lookout for more efficient ways to deliver better services to Floridians.

There might be no better target for a policy revamp than Florida’s prison system. As the state’s population grew by almost 200 percent between 1970 and 2014, its prison population expanded by more than 1,000 percent. Sentence lengths in Florida increased by 166 percent between 1990 and 2009, more than any other state, according to the Florida Campaign for Criminal Justice Reform, a nonpartisan coalition. State taxpayers are now spending $2.4 billion a year to incarcerate almost 100,000 people.

Many Florida taxpayers might assume that long sentences and mass incarceration are simply the price of fighting crime effectively. But other states — including Georgia, Texas, New York and Louisiana — have shown it’s possible to bring down prison populations and save taxpayers big money without sacrificing public safety.

Florida, by contrast, keeps pursuing what another group promoting prison and sentencing reform, the Project on Accountable Justice based at Florida State University, calls “a trifecta of ineffective and expensive strategies.” It incarcerates too many people for minor offenses; 72 percent of people admitted to Florida prisons in the 2015 budget year were sentenced for nonviolent crimes. Its hard-line and inflexible approach to sentencing, including mandatory minimums, keeps many inmates behind bars longer than their crimes or public safety warrant. And its lack of systems for reviewing inmates’ conduct and rewarding them for good behavior leaves corrections officials without tools for better managing and safely reducing prison populations.

Fortunately, there are reform-minded legislators in both parties who are pushing legislation that would fix some of the flaws in Florida’s criminal justice system. They are being cheered on by groups spanning the political spectrum from liberal to conservative.

One bill would allow judges to depart from mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, provided the offenses weren’t violent, weren’t connected to organized crime, and didn’t result in death or serious injury. The measure is sponsored in the House by St. Petersburg Democrat Ben Diamond and in the Senate by St. Petersburg Republican Jeff Brandes. As Brandes said, “We have to stop treating addicts like kingpins.”

Conservative groups have joined liberal groups in praising this common-sense proposal. “A judicial safety valve would allow courts to divert offenders with substance abuse problems into drug treatment, which is more effective and less expensive than prison,” said Lauren Krisai, director of Criminal Justice Reform at the libertarian Reason Foundation.

Another bill, sponsored in the Senate by Orlando Democrat Randolph Bracy and in the House by Naples Republican Byron Donalds, would increase the state’s threshold for felony property theft from $300 to $1,500. The current low threshold, which hasn’t been raised since 1986, can brand those guilty of petty theft as convicted felons, a label with lasting negative consequences for employment, voting and successful re-integration into society.

Both bills were introduced in previous sessions but failed to become law. The pressure on next year’s budget, the success of other states in implementing strategies like these and polls showing majority support for them among Floridians should be more than enough to earn their passage in 2018.